About Me

My life was described by one of my editors as “impossibly exotic” – although really it was not my life, but me, that was the exotic, the uprooted plant, the one who didn’t belong, always living in someone else’s backyard...
Now I am back in Australia, the returning native learning to live where I was born. Writer, traveler, environmentalist. Author of The Isles of Glory trilogy (The Aware, Gilfeather, The Tainted); The Mirage Makers trilogy (Heart of the Mirage, Shadow of Tyr, Song of the Shiver Barrens); The Stormlord trilogy The Last Stormlord, Stormlord Rising, Stormlord's Exile, and writing as Glenda Noramly, a stand-alone book Havenstar. LATEST:
THE FORSAKEN LANDS
A clash of cultures and magic as traders and buccaneers hunt for spices and wealth in the Va-forsaken half of the world ... even as the unidentified darkness of plague and murder stalks their own land.
THE LASCAR'S DAGGER and THE DAGGER'S PATH available worldwide now! Final book, THE FALL OF THE DAGGER out mid-April.

Saturday, August 30, 2014

The British Fantasy Convention this year is in York (Friday 5th-Sunday 7th September), and I will be there -- my first time at this particular convention.

I will be a panellist on two panels (see below)and also giving a 20 minute reading from eitherThe Lascar's Dagger or The Dagger's Path.

And I'd like some help here.If you have an opinion on these panel topics, email me, or comment here or on facebook or twitter...

For example:What fantasy/SF books have you read(apart from The Isles of Glory!) where there was a platonic friendship between womenforming a central part of the book (or fantasy TV series/film)?Why do you think (if indeed you do) that such platonic friendship between women in fantasy fiction is rarer than male ones?

Is it necessary to dispose of the parents of young protagonists? Can you think of successful examples where parents were a full participant of the young hero/heroine's adventures? Saturday 12.00 Noon Dead Parents, Burned Homesteads and Wicked Stepmothers
Is it essential to write out the parents before youthful characters can
head out on adventures? Are adult figures always unhelpful or malign?
Should writers search for ways to keep parents around — or do fantasies
of a world without parents fulfil a real need?Marc Gascoigne (m), Edward Cox, Emma Newman, Sophia McDougall, Glenda Larke, Laura Lam

Saturday 3.00pm She Ain’t Heavy, She’s My Sister
Kirk and Spock, Luke and Han, Frodo and Sam – epic friendships between
men are common in fantasy, but friendships between women, or platonic
relationships between men and women that stay that way – are much
thinner on the ground. The panellists discuss why it matters and examine
some of the rare exceptions.Roz Kaveney (m), Mhairi Simpson, Glenda Larke, Charlaine Harris

Friday, August 29, 2014

Thanks to the kindness of Welsh friends from Porthmadog, my Welsh exploration continued -- all background and research for another novel, I must admit. I can't look at Medieval architecture and remains without knowing that one day I have to write a novel set in those times. (Many people seem to think that fantasy novels are all Medieval. In fact, I have 13 novels already published or underway, and not one of them is set in a landscape belonging to the Middle Ages. However, that will change in the future.)

Above: the complex of Penmon PrioryFront left: the Dovecote, Background left to right: Ruins of the monastery, Prior's house, Church

A
6th Century saint, Seiriol, founded a monastery here in Penmon, Anglesey. In the 13th
century it became a priory of the Black Canons, the Augustinians. There
is (of course) a holy well and a hermit’s cell nearby. The earliest
wooden church wasburned by raiding Danes in the 10th century.

The church has been
extended, but the older part contains some interesting Celtic crosses (predating the church & monastery) from about 1000 CE. One
arm was sawn off for a lintel of a refectory window. The font resides in
the pilfered base of another Celtic cross c1000. Monks were nothing if
not practical!

The arches show Norman
influence and the arcading is early twelfth century, and the figures on
the wall above it are interesting.

The one above is shiela-na-gig, a
woman exposing herself (so says the blurb on the leaflet…) and why that
should be considered appropriate for a church transept is a mystery to
me. (When I was growing up, ‘shiela' was a common word for ‘woman’ in
Australia — not exactly respectful but not exactly derogatory either.)

The property was taken
over by a private family in 1536 (I would guess someone friendly with
Henry VIII and other royals) who then built a dovecote and walled an
immense area as their own private deer park. Doubtless that particular
family thought the dissolution ot the monasteries was a fabulous idea.

The Prior’s house above on the left is now a private residence. The monastery, also adjoining, (not in the photo), now a ruin.

The photo above is from the refectory, the floor now missing, and
the window on the left has steps leading up to a seat, where a canon
would have read holy texts to the monks while they were having their
meals (no red meat, being Augustinians, but they did have a fishpond…)

The gem of the complex,
though is the dovecote (above), built in 1600. The birds — free flying — would
have entered through the top cupola of the corbelled roof, and then
nested in the holes in the interior wall.

The central brick structure inside (below) is
a mystery, possibly some sort of aid to support ladders, which were
needed to reach the uppermost nests. There are 930 nesting holes.
(Cleaning the dovecote would have been a nightmare.)

The doves
would have supplied eggs, but also poults — the fledglings. Pigeon pie
would not have been made from adult birds (flying develops muscles and
birds therefore are usually tough eating) but from birds not yet old
enough to leave the nest.

Puffin Island (above) is where St Seiriol died, a hermit. I’m not sure why being a hermit was regarded as saintly; to me he was probably another selfish old man, more interested in his own afterlife than in helping living people. Either that, or he was mentally ill. Anyway, Serriol's remains are now buried under the altar of the modern part of the church. He is supposed to have made a point of always walking with his back to the sun — earning him the name Seiriol the Pale — so he was certainly eccentric.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

This dates back to later Neolithic, when farming first started. Perhaps appropriately, the site is now surrounded by farm fields.

Beginning as a henge (14 upright stones surrounded by a bank and a ditch), it was later deliberately covered and turned into burial chamber. The theory postulated is that this was done by people with differing beliefs to the first lot. (Yep, maybe rival religious cults is nothing new…)

The grave entrance is flanked by portal stones leading into a stone passage and a chamber where stone slabs supported two giant capstones.

View from entrance looking inside

Inside this chamber is a standing stone, which is rather unusual.

Inside the chamber

Visitors have left offerings: coins, weavings of vegetations, flowers, fruit. My husband contributed a coin in remembrance of a loved family member, whose death had just occurred.

This view shows the standing stone in front of the back slit.

The original mound was larger, and after
burial was apparently sealed. It was, after all, for burials. At some
stage, an ox was buried in a chamber outside the entrance, possibly all part of rituals conducted there.

Monday, August 25, 2014

THEY FOLLOW WHERE THE DAGGER LEADSWhen sailors came to Ardhi’s island home, they plundered not only its riches, but its magic too. Now Ardhi must retrieve what was stolen, but there are ruthless men after this power, men who will do anything to possess it . . .Sorcerers, lascars, pirates and thieves collide in this thrilling sequel to Glenda Larke’s epic fantasy adventure, THE LASCAR’S DAGGER.

‘Outstanding all the way to the last word.’ – Elizabeth Moon on The Lascar’s Dagger

It's hard to categorise this London museum because it seems to have such a random selection of fabulous stuff, rather like a pirate's treasure trove of plunder. (Come to think of it, I suppose some of the items were in fact plundered at one stage or another, before they ended up in England...)

For a writer of fantasy with a historical bent, this is the place for...

inspiration...

research...

instilling a sense of wonder...

widening one's knowledge about a certain period...

getting detail right...

and just plain enjoying oneself!

And so it was that Karen Miller and I ended up spending a day here, looking at things like this:

Cutlery

The knife on the left is engraved with music for a blessing, made in about 1550.

Note the case for the cutlery set on the right.

The above is called a roundel.

It dates from late 15th century Netherlands.

It portrays the life of a merchant as he weighs goods, using a set of standardised weights. If you look closely, it will not only tell you what a merchant of that era might have worn, but you will see the artist was making a cynical commentary about profits...

Writing a battle scene?

How about this -- from Southern Germany about 1550.

A horseman's hammer, for the pounding and tearing of armour, yet it is delicately decorated with silver overlay designed by a Nuremberg printmaker.

An ornamental ship for pure decoration?

Nope. This is a salt cellar made of a nautilus shell and gilded silver, from France of the mid-16th century.

It would have been placed before the guest of honour, the salt in a small bowl on the ship's deck.

A door knocker from the late 15th Century

An elaborate casket for valued religious relics

And this, my all time favourite:

a large wooden carving to be hung on an outside wall,
just to show a would-be thief what might happen to him if he dares a burglary.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

As a writer of fantasy novels, I'm always looking for inspiration, background, ideas. And every so often, one comes across a place that speaks its history so loudly, it sends shivers down the spine.

This castle -- this fortress -- is so huge, so impressive, so symbolic, it appears more fantastic than historical, something worthy of a film set.

But real it is, with a history of repression, of labour and extravagant expenditure, of pomp and splendour, of the birth of one king and the investiture of a prince, of the besieging of royal troops, of the imprisonment of felons and debtors.

Edward I commanded its construction after the defeat of the Welsh

and the death of their prince, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, in 1282.

It still wasn't completely finished when work on it was stopped in 1330.

It overlooks the River Seiont, and was linked to the walls around the town.

Friday, August 22, 2014

As some of you know, I have written parts of books on just about every form of transport there is. Trains are great for this -- but here I am in Porthmadog, Wales, and for most of the Welsh journey by train, I was far too busy to write -- looking out the window instead. This is a GREAT train journey. Forget any derogatory things you have ever heard about Arriva Trains.

We left Euston Station in London in the morning.

When we arrived in Porthmadog I sent a text to my daughter.

She replied: 'You could have been in Los Angeles in that time!'

Ah, but the scenery...

Although erecting tents so close to the windblown coast of the Irish Sea would have made me nervous.

You don't get this from 30,000 ft up in the sky.

(Above, a caravan park.)

Drystone walls and white sheep and hedgerows...

Sheep with TAILS. Almost unheard of in Australia, where you really don't want to see a flyblown sheep.

(Not sure about those red marks on their backs, but in some parts of the world, dye is a way of telling which ewe has been serviced by which ram...according to the dye bag he has strapped to his underside.)

The train runs alongside a cliff, and you can look straight down on the sea. Scary.

Look out the window and you feel as though you are flying over the water...

Barmouth﻿

Harlech Castle﻿

The last part of the journey is -- at the moment -- by coach, as they are reinforcing a railway bridge.

Links

Awards

BEST FANTASY NOVEL OF THE YEAR Shortlisted Finalist2003: for The Aware; 2004: for The Tainted; 2006: for Heart of the Mirage; 2007: for The Song of the Shiver Barrens; 2009: for The Last Stormlord 2010: for Stormlord Rising 2011: for Stormlord's Exile 2014: The Lascar's Dagger 2015: The Dagger's Path 2016: The Fall of the Dagger